- Arvind's Newsletter
- Posts
- Arvind's Newsletter
1.Govt has started trade with neighbouring countries in INR
The government has started trade in the rupee with neighbouring countries, including Nepal and Bhutan, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.
"Rupee trade mechanism has been initiated to facilitate trade in national currency with Russia. As of July 2, RBI has approved 34 applications from different Russian banks for opening SRVA in 14 Indian commercial banks.”
RBI has issued guidelines for opening Special Rupee Vostro Accounts (SRVA) by foreign banks in Indian commercial banks. Sri Lanka has included INR in its list of designated foreign currencies.
India and Bangladesh have also formally launched a new mechanism to settle trade in INR on July 11. Two Indian and Bangladeshi banks each have been designated to settle bilateral trade in INR.
Read more at:
2.Pakistan election delay raises fears for democracy, reports Financial Times
Pakistan’s jailing of opposition leader Imran Khan and moves to delay national elections have thrown the nation into political uncertainty that analysts say puts at risk its fragile democracy.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif plans to dissolve his government on Wednesday and hand over power to a caretaker administration, the standard practice ahead of a general election that according to the constitution must then be held within 90 days. But the decision on Saturday by a Sharif-led committee to redraw the country’s electoral boundaries on the basis of a recently completed census means ministers now expect the election to be delayed until early next year. That means the nuclear-armed South Asian nation of 241 mn faces a prolonged period without a government backed by parliament.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been barred from politics for five years.Khan, who was sentenced in a corruption case over the weekend, was disqualified in line with his conviction, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) said in an order.
3.Google is in talks with major music labels to license artists’ voices and melodies for AI-generated songs, the Financial Times reported.
Citing sources, the FT said the ultimate goal was to build a tool where fans could create legitimate tracks featuring artists’ songs and pay copyright-owners royalties, with musicians being allowed to opt-in to the program.
The rise of generative AI has bred a surge in “deepfake” songs that can convincingly mimic the voices, lyrics or sound of established artists, often without their consent. Frank Sinatra’s voice has been used on a version of the hip-hop song “Gangsta’s Paradise” while Johnny Cash’s has been deployed on the pop single “Barbie Girl”. A YouTube user called PluggingAI offers songs imitating the voices of the deceased rappers Tupac and Notorious B.I.G.
In other news related to Google, YouTube has an experimental feature to auto-generate descriptions of the videos. For the whole history of the internet and before, computers didn’t really know what was inside videos, or even pictures - they only knew the title and the metadata, whatever was typed in the comments, and, later, what else people watched. They could infer and associate, but they couldn’t watch the video and take notes. Now they can.
Pretty soon, you’ll be able to say ‘find me videos of people showing how to stir-fry chicken’ or ‘find me a car chase with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Omar Sharif’ and it will come up, not because people typed in that it has Belmondo, but because the AI can index the video just as it indexes the text. ‘AI is anything that doesn’t work yet’, but also, age of wonder.
4.Semaglutide Reduces Heart Risk
Pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk's weight-loss drug Wegovy was found to significantly reduce the risk of major heart issues, according to a study released yesterday. Analysts suggest the results could help decrease the cost of the new class of semaglutide-based weight-loss drugs—including Ozempic—often labeled as nonmedical treatments by insurers.
The five-year study observed the effects of a weekly injection in over 17,000 obese patients over the age of 45 who have cardiovascular disease, reporting a 20% reduction in heart attacks, strokes, and cardiac arrests. The treatment consists of an appetite-suppressing gut hormone known as semaglutide, which has skyrocketed in popularity since being FDA-approved in 2021. Recent studies repeatedly have shown the drug's efficacy, with recipients seeing a 15% weight reduction.
5.The law of reversed effort: The harder you try, the harder you fall.
There are many moments in life when trying too hard is counterproductive. Aldous Huxley called this the law of reversed effort.
It mirrors an old idea found in Daoism, Wu Wei, which is to step away from all the busyness and just let things happen.
There are many practical ways in which this can be applied, from writer's block to penalty kicks.
